Counting Days
by WingedFlight
Summary: The first morning back is always the hardest. Eustace, Post VDT.


_**A/N: **__A little late-ish in coming out, but this probably counts as my VDT movie reaction fic. Of course, to counter this, it ended up being written entirely in bookverse. Thanks to Metonomia for a wonderful job as beta once again!_

-x-

**Counting Days**

-x-

_[Edmund said] "You were only an ass, but I was a traitor."_

"_Well, don't tell me about it, then," said Eustace. "But who is Aslan? Do you know him?"_

"_Well – he knows me," said Edmund._

_- Voyage of the Dawn Treader_

-x-

On the morning after his return from an adventure like no other, Eustace lay in bed counting days.

Or at least, he was _trying_ to count days, which in this case was another matter entirely. The problem was, he'd get up to twenty-nine with no problem, and then the numbers kept slipping around. He knew he ought to be able to get much higher – they'd clearly been aboard the _Dawn Treader_ longer than that – but it had been so hard to keep track of time when he was a dragon, and after that, Eustace hadn't been paying much attention to dates.

By the time he had decided that it must have been several months at the least that he was there – which he had already guessed somewhat - Edmund had long since left the room. He'd gone quietly, as if trying not to wake Eustace, and Eustace had been much too wrapped up in numbers to let him know different. Now, however, Eustace was quite ready to talk, and found it rather inconvenient that his cousin was not readily available.

Nevertheless, he gamely swung his legs out of bed and dashed out into the hall and to the spare room where Lucy had been sleeping the last few weeks. Chances were, he thought, his cousins would be holed up in there together, staring at that painting or reminiscing or something.

But when he timidly knocked and opened the door, there was no one inside to greet him. The bed had been neatly made and everything straightened, and the painting of the _Dawn Treader_ stood proud on the far wall. Eustace paused and tilted his head to study it, and then he crossed the room until he was only a pace away. Gently, hesitantly, he reached up to touch the painting, and was disappointed to find that the canvas was quite solid and did not give.

Well, it had been worth a try, anyway.

It wasn't until Eustace had gone all over the house twice that he thought to check the garden. Sure enough, there they were, seated in the far corner on the grass with their heads tipped back to the sky. He really should have guessed – it was just like his cousins to spend all day beneath the sun without regard for their constitution. Then Eustace remembered he didn't care for such things anymore. And besides, he had spent plenty of time outside while aboard the _Dawn Treader_, which, if anything, had only made him stronger. So he ran out the back door and across the little Victory Garden to drop down beside his cousins.

Neither of them acknowledged him at all, but then, they did not seem to be acknowledging each other, either. Edmund was leaning back against the fence with Lucy's head on his shoulder, and both their eyes were closed. Eustace might have thought they were asleep, except there were tears running in a line down Lucy's cheek, and he didn't think it was possible to cry while sleeping.

He did not know what to do. It was strangely uncomfortable to wait for his cousins to open their eyes, and yet he did not want to disturb them, either. So he sat where he was and tried not to be a bother, and began counting again in the hopes that the dates might stick in place this time.

He felt no surprise when the numbers still refused to cooperate, but all the same, he went through the dates twice more. It was really no use. Finally, rather fed up with the whole matter, he sighed in defeat, and then immediately lifted both hands to cover his mouth because he had been working so hard not to make a sound. But by then, it was too late, and Edmund had already opened his eyes.

"Hello, cousin," he said in a low voice. From the sound of it, Eustace wondered if Edmund had been crying too, just like Lucy had, although there was no sign of tears on the older boy's face.

The thought of this only made Eustace all the more uncomfortable, and he exclaimed quickly, "I didn't mean to interrupt!" For a moment, he was afraid that he might be sent away, like had happened occasionally on the _Dawn Treader_ when Edmund had wanted some space, but his cousin just smiled tiredly.

"Lucy and I have been here long enough," he assured Eustace, and shrugged his shoulder so that Lucy's head jerked and she had to pull away and sit up on her own. She blinked drearily once or twice and then smudged away the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand before smiling softly at Eustace.

"We were just remembering," she explained, "And generally feeling sorry for ourselves. But I suppose it is about time we rejoined our own world. What do you want?"

Her sudden question threw Eustace off guard. "H-how did you know I wanted something?"

Her laugh was sadder than the one he remembered from the days on the _Dawn Treader_ – sadder and older. "You would not have waited here so long if there wasn't something you wanted to ask. Go ahead."

It was strange, even after so long – how long? – on the _Dawn Treader_, to hear Lucy speak like an adult even though she was physically barely a year older than himself. Her expression reminded him of one of the teachers at the Experiment House, who had claimed to love each of her students equally right up until the day _Their_ antics had caused her to resign. He'd never given the teacher much thought since then, but he felt rather sorry for her now.

"Eustace?" Lucy prodded gently.

"Oh. Right." He opened his mouth only to find that, in thinking of relative ages, he had completely forgotten what he had come to say. Something about the _Dawn Treader_, their trip… It came to him again all at once, and he blurted, "How long were we gone?"

Lucy frowned in confusion. "Gone? It took no time at all."

He shook his head impatiently. "No, no, that isn't what I meant. How long were we there? On the _Dawn Treader_?"

Her lips pursed in thought, and she turned to Edmund for help.

"A few months?" Edmund guessed. "Maybe half a year?"

It was just as Eustace had feared – king and queen though they might be, his cousins were still absolutely useless when it came to practical things like tracking time. "You really have no idea?" he asked, rather disappointed, because he already knew the answer would be no.

Sure enough, both Lucy and Edmund shook their heads at him regretfully.

"Drat." He dropped backward to lie on his back in the grass, something he would never have done _before_, and tried to think things through again. "The problem is," he said aloud for the benefit of his cousins, "I want to know how old I am now. Because – because the time I spent there still counts, even if I don't look any older here, right? I know I've gone back to how I had been – I'm all flimsy again, and I must have had a growth spurt _there_ because I feel an awful lot shorter now."

"You had a dragon of a growth spurt," Edmund commented under his breath.

"That's not funny," Eustace retorted, but he was grinning just as much as his cousins.

Lucy stretched her legs out beside him, wiggling her bare toes up at the sky. Alberta would not have approved of Lucy's bare feet, had she been there. Eustace made himself forget this – after all, even he had gone about in bare feet on board the ship several times during the voyage.

"I think," Lucy said tentatively, "I think it doesn't really matter how many days or weeks we were there. It's important that we were there at all."

He considered Lucy's words as he stared up at the great, puffy, white clouds overhead. He had seen clouds just the same over the Eastern Sea – he had flown through a whole clump of them when he was a dragon, even. At the time, he had felt some sort of strange vindication to see that the clouds really were made of water vapour, even in a magical world; now, he found himself wishing they were something more fanciful, so it would be as though a bit of that world could drift through into this. It was absolute nonsense, he knew, but he wished it all the same.

"You mean it matters because I changed, right?" he asked finally. "Because otherwise, I would still be a prat."

Edmund grunted a laugh, and even Lucy raised her hand to her lips to hide the twitching corners of her mouth.

"It's true, though," Eustace continued defensively. "I was absolutely horrid."

He expected his cousins to laugh again, or say something reassuring about his change, but only silence greeted his words. He sat up, rather startled, and wondered if he had said something wrong. Lucy was smiling sort of funny at her brother, and Edmund – Edmund looked strangely thoughtful, and much older than he had only a moment before, older even than when Eustace had previously caught glimpses of the Just King. Eustace looked between his cousins, feeling that he had suddenly been left behind, as if the conversation had skipped ahead silently without him.

"You were only a prat," Edmund said finally, and before he could say anymore, Lucy squeezed his arm tight and said brightly, "I'm getting rather hungry. How about I prepare some breakfast?"

Eustace frowned in confusion and started to stand up with her, but Lucy pushed him back down before reaching to give Edmund's arm another reassuring squeeze. "I'll let you know when I'm ready for you," she sang, and then she was gone into the house before Eustace could say a thing.

He frowned and looked back at Edmund, wondering how the conversation had managed to end so abruptly. "What-?"

"She could have been more subtle about it," Edmund muttered, and then, when Eustace still clearly did not understand, he added, "She left because she doesn't need to be a part of the discussion."

"Why not?"

Edmund looked as though he was torn between laughing at Eustace's naivety and shaking his head. He settled for a bitter smile, and began again what he had been about to say earlier. "You were only a prat. I was a traitor."

Up until then, Eustace had not given any thought at all to the odd comment his cousin had made about treachery that early morning after the undragoning. He'd been much too concerned about learning more about Aslan to really take in anything else Edmund might have said. And now that Edmund had reminded him, he felt rather silly to have forgotten at all.

"I say," he mumbled, "I'm sorry – I didn't mean to-"

"I bring it up of my own free will, cousin," Edmund assured him, and sat up straighter. It was clear that Eustace was currently in the company of the Just King, and not just his two-years-older cousin.

It was doubtful that Edmund would have brought this up if he did not want to talk about it, but Eustace could not quite bring himself to ask the question that hung between them. Edmund must have guessed that he wanted to know, though, for when the silence was just beginning to go on too long, he said, "You have heard of the White Witch by now, I suppose?"

"Oh yes," Eustace answered immediately. There had been many, many nights aboard the _Dawn Treader_ when everyone would sit around on the deck beneath the stars and listen to tales of Narnia. One of the very first he had heard after his undragoning had been the defeat of the White Witch. Lucy had been the one to tell the story then, seated cross-legged on the deck with her eyes half-shut in memory as she described the arrival of spring and the clash of the armies and the castle on the Eastern shore.

"Lucy was the first to get into Narnia, and I am sure you know of that by now," Edmund continued, "but I was the second. And rather than meeting a kind old faun by the lamppost, I found the witch herself."

Since the moment he had been undragoned, Eustace had begun to view Edmund as a hero of sorts. After all, his cousin was a king, the Just King of old, featured in so many of the sailor's tales. Edmund had fought in battles, he was brave, and he was intelligent. He knew Aslan - or, well, Aslan knew him. There had been times during the voyage when Eustace had wondered if Edmund had ever done anything wrong. That is, he did not think his cousin was perfect by any stretch of the imagination, for everyone made mistakes sometimes, but he felt that Edmund made less of these mistakes than most.

So it felt almost as though the story Edmund told was just that – a story, and nothing more, because there was no way the Edmund he knew could have done such things. At the same time, he also knew that Edmund would never tell him this story if it were not true. It was if there were two Edmunds – the one in the story, and the one sitting in front of him now – and try as he might, Eustace was unable to reconcile the two in his head.

It was not a very long story. Edmund clearly had no desire to go into specifics, and Eustace had no desire to ask him to. While he was a little curious to know such things like what the Turkish Delight had tasted like, and if the witch's castle was very cold, he had also learned enough after his change to realize that such questions would not be very tactful at all. So Eustace listened in silence, and when Edmund reached the battle, he ended with, "You know the rest, I expect," and that was the end.

They sat without speaking for some time after that. Edmund was most likely giving Eustace some time to digest what he had just learned; this was much needed. He found himself wondering why Edmund had told him about the betrayal – it wasn't exactly the sort of story Eustace would have gone around telling, had it happened to him. But it did not feel right to ask.

They had been sitting for some time when Lucy came out again, calling cheerfully that food had been prepared, and tea as well. Eustace glanced at Edmund to see if there was anything else his cousin wished to say before they went inside, but the older boy seemed to consider the conversation, such that it had been, finished. So they both rose to their feet and crossed the garden and went back inside to find that Lucy had prepared a meal as similar as she could to what they would have eaten on board the _Dawn Treader._

"Alberta would be horrified," Eustace commented as they sat down at the table, but Lucy merely stuck her tongue out at him and dug in heartily.

It was a very enjoyable meal, and Eustace could not help but wish he could eat like this every day. Unfortunately, such meals were simply not possible, due to his parents and school meals and rationing.

"We shall have to let Peter and Susan know at once," Lucy was saying, "and the professor, and Aunt Polly."

Eustace glanced up from his food in surprise. "Who?"

"Professor Kirke and Miss Polly Plummer. They were there at the very creation of Narnia," Lucy explained. "But that is their story to tell."

It should not have been so shocking to learn that others from this world had gotten into Narnia, but all the same, it was a little hard for Eustace to wrap his head around. "Is there anyone else?" he asked curiously.

Edmund shook his head, but Lucy answered firmly, "I am sure of it. We just don't know of them."

"Then how do you know there are others?"

"Well," she replied, "It makes sense, doesn't it? Why should Aslan only bring in people from our world once or twice? I am sure there were plenty of others who had their own adventures, only we don't know about them. Or perhaps they came to Narnia and we do know about them as legends."

"I suppose," Eustace added, "There could have been people who have been in Narnia, only the Narnia they visited is still in our Narnia's future." As soon as he said it, he felt rather foolish for even voicing the idea because of how convoluted and unlikely it sounded, but Lucy beamed.

"That's very likely!" she exclaimed. "I do like that!"

"Not that it especially matters," Edmund put in, "Seeing as we can't find them here. We can't exactly run an ad in the newspapers."

"Why not?" Eustace asked through a mouthful of food, and then reddened.

But Lucy only laughed at his words and turned teasingly to Edmund. "Yes, why not?" she asked. "Who is to say they wouldn't answer?"

"I expect they would be lonely, if they didn't have anyone else to share Narnia with," Eustace said thoughtfully. He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "I wouldn't have known how to act in front of Alberta if you two hadn't helped me."

"We could start an association!" Lucy exclaimed. "The Friends of Narnia! And we could have all sorts of dinners and events and – and -"

"Dances?" Eustace suggested, thinking of the nights when he would watch the sailors jig beneath the stars to the tune of a fiddle and pipe.

"Oh yes," Edmund muttered sarcastically, but Lucy's eyes lit up, and he added hastily, "That is– no! I meant no!"

"But it would be ever so fun!" Lucy gushed. "And we could have a secret code word at the door – or a question – and write letters in a secret language of our own, and write accounts of our adventures in a great, leather book."

Edmund snorted at her excitement. "Don't forget, we have no idea if anyone else has ever gone to Narnia."

She waved a hand to dismiss his cynicism. "You'll help me, won't you, Eustace? I'm sure we'll find plenty of people. Or – even if we don't actually find others who have gone to Narnia, we'll find others who have had Adventures!"

By the time the meal had finished, Lucy had managed to put together quite a list of ideas for activities to have at a Friends of Narnia Association Meeting. Eustace, for the most part, just listened in awe as she rambled on, while Edmund continued to inject wry remarks.

It would have seemed a very odd discussion to have over a meal, had Eustace not realized pretty early on that this was his cousins' way of coping with coming back to this world.

After everyone had finished eating, and the dishes had all been washed and dried and returned to their home in the cupboard, Lucy immediately dashed upstairs to draw up a list of the ideas she had had for association meetings. Edmund watched her go with a smirk on his face, and whispered to Eustace, "We'll be hearing about this for weeks, yet."

"Will we really?"

"Lucy likes nothing more than to make new friends," Edmund reminded him, "And this gives her the perfect excuse to try and do exactly that."

And with those words, Edmund left the kitchen as well. Eustace considered following him, but his cousin looked as though he rather wished to be left alone, now, and besides, something in what Edmund had said had struck a chord. So Eustace went back outside and across the Victory Garden to the corner where his cousins had been sitting earlier. There he dropped down onto the grass and fell onto his back, positioning himself so that he could see the sky above but not the fence or the house, and for a moment, he was able to pretend he was on one of the islands of the Eastern Sea with the rest of the Dawn Treader crew all around him.

Pretending was harder than he would have expected. He had not ever tried anything like this before, for during the voyage, he had never had need to make believe, and before that, he had never wanted to. So Eustace was only able to keep up the illusion for a few minutes before he became aware of the English clothes he was wearing, and the absence of the briny smell of the sea, and the fact that he couldn't hear anyone moving or breathing beside him.

"I miss you, Reepicheep," he said before he could quite help himself. He had not quite intended to speak aloud because it was foolish and pointless, but once he had, it felt almost as though somewhere, the noble mouse might hear him. So Eustace said again, "I miss you." Then he thought to check behind him to be sure no one was listening in on his conversation, but the yard was empty.

All the same, he felt a little silly speaking aloud, so when he continued, it was at a whisper, "You were the best friend I've ever had, Reep."

It came to him that he was delivering a sort of eulogy, which was a pleasing thought, even if it did sort of make him want to cry. But he thought he had better do it properly, which in his mind meant sitting up straight and closing his eyes. Then he felt the tears again, and had to brush them away because he thought it was not at all proper. And then he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to start, only now he could not think of anything to say.

"Bother," he grumbled, and then shut his mouth quickly, for fear that that was not a good thing to say as part of an eulogy. Then, rather desperate for words, he said once more, "I miss you, Reepicheep," and when this didn't feel quite grand enough, he amended this to, "the Brave." And again, he added, "You were the best friend I have ever had. You were the _first_ friend I have ever had." And then his throat began to feel odd and choked up, and his eyes were watering again, so he stopped with the eulogy – such that it was – and fell back to look at the sky some more. But the tears made everything look as though he were underwater.

"Bother," he said fiercely, and shut his eyes firmly again, which really only made things worse. Now the only thing he could picture was Reepicheep floating up, up, up over the wave and disappearing to Aslan's Country, and Eustace could only think of the fact that even if he ever did go back, he would never see the mouse again.

He reminded himself that there would be others there – other friends he had made – but it didn't help very much. The sailors would all likely be on another voyage if he ever came back, and he rather doubted he would drop into the water in front of their ship again. Although, Caspian was a king, not a sailor, so he would still be in Narnia. And it was possible that some of the others might be taking a break from sailing at the time that Eustace returned.

This buoyed his spirits considerably, even when he remembered that for all his thoughts, he did not know when or how he might ever get back, anyway. Still, Aslan had said he _would_ go back – or at least, he had not said Eustace would _not_, which was as good a promise as any.

It was much later in the day when a polite cough above his head caused Eustace to open his eyes to the sight of Lucy standing above him. "Mind if I sit down?" she asked, and he scrambled up to make room. His head was sore, from moving so suddenly after laying still for so long, and from crying before that.

"You miss them, don't you?" she asked once she was comfortable.

Eustace nodded, unable to quite trust his voice.

"I sometimes find it hard to remember," she continued, "that we have to live here now. As much as Narnia is my home, England is, too."

"You must miss them terribly," Eustace said after the pause that followed.

Lucy smiled tightly. "More than you could imagine," she whispered, and then she took a closer look at his face and corrected herself, "No – you can imagine. You know. It's hard, isn't it?"

He nodded immediately, unable to find the words to explain just how difficult it was.

She smiled again and reached to take his hand. "But the thing we have to remember," she said, "Is that we have friends here, too."

"I don't," Eustace blurted.

She looked surprised at this, as though she had completely forgotten that Eustace had been so awful before their adventure. "Well, you have Edmund and I," she said carefully, "and you'll meet the Professor and Aunt Polly, too. That's a start. And I'm sure you'll make other friends once you get back to school."

Eustace thought back to the Experiment House, and the bullies and the victims and how all the students were separated in these two groups without exception, and felt rather skeptical that he could ever have any friends in a place like that. But he did no want to contradict Lucy, so he just nodded again.

"Besides," she added confidently, "Aslan will be there to help you. He's always there, even if you can't see him. Knowing this always makes everything feel that much easier."

"I suppose you're right," Eustace said hesitantly – not so much because he doubted her words, as because he was uncertain that he would be able to remember this when he most needed it.

Lucy patted his hand and then drew back to sprawl out across the grass, just as he had been, before. "The clouds are gorgeous today, aren't they?" she asked, and gestured upward to the sky.

Eustace tipped his head back, and was about to agree with her when a thought struck him. "Lucy," he began, "I think-"

"Yes?" she asked, sitting up again to listen better.

"I think I understand now. About how it isn't important how long we've been there."

"Yes?"

"It's – it's that I've changed," he explained, and because that had already been figured out earlier, he added, "but it's also – it's also the friends we made when we were there."

He had been looking down at the grass as he said this, but as soon as he finished he glanced up and saw that Lucy was beaming at him. For some reason, this made him all shivery inside, as if he had expected her to disagree with him and was now absolutely thrilled to find that she did not.

"That is exactly it, Eustace," she declared. "That's it exactly."

And she fell back onto the grass again, and Eustace did, too, feeling an awful lot better than he had been before. He had been on an incredible journey, and he had made some incredible friends – the first friends he had ever had – and the fact that he _could_ make friends meant that he'd be able to make more in this world, somehow. It was almost exciting to think of, and he felt just for a moment a rush that was probably exactly how Lucy had felt earlier when talking of her association.

He might not be able to count the days he had been on board the _Dawn Treader_, but he was certainly going to count the days until he went back, and, Eustace silently vowed, he'd make each one of them worth being in England.

The clouds over head were just as white and puffy as before, and Eustace pretended to himself that the one just above, the small and curved one, was really Reepicheep just as he had been that moment when he went over the water to Aslan's Country. Eustace lifted a hand to wave.

-x-


End file.
